It is a part of it, but not the whole discipline, which means the original question may be faulty, at worst, leading at best. Did the writer mean a part of doing economics? The way the question is written leaves if fair to conclude they meant all. To that the answer would be no.
To be fair, the author's title was Studying Economic Data Is Not "Doing Economics". I made it a question for the post, because I thought that was better for sparking conversation.
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It was a very fine question then, sir.
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Thank you
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